


The Color of the Fire

by dicklomatticimmunity



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Rape, Post-Star Trek Beyond, Psychological Trauma, Vulcan Mind Melds, don't worry the mind rape is between mirror!Spock/McCoy and only lasts one chapter, rating will probably also be upped to explicit at some point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 17:33:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8254430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dicklomatticimmunity/pseuds/dicklomatticimmunity
Summary: After experiencing trauma at the hands of Spock's mirror counterpart, McCoy needs Spock's help to recover.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to bonesmctightass and mochisquish for beta-ing this for me. You guys are amazing. <3

McCoy watches the monitor above Spock's bio-bed, his entire body tense. He’s too aware that if he isn't on the transporter pad in five minutes, Jim, Uhura, and Scotty are beaming out without him. His only way out of this parallel universe will be gone, and he'll be stuck here, on the I.S.S. Enterprise, with its brutal empire and oppressive security team.

 _Damnit Spock, stabilize already_ , he silently urges, as he focuses on the monitor. The beeping coming from it is steady but uneasy, an alarming tone he’s used to hearing. Spock's vitals are improving, albeit at a slower pace than he would like. He should be thankful Spock's recovering at all, he supposes. The plaster skull had shattered easily over his head, but it was blunt trauma all the same, and would cause hemorrhaging of the brain (and possibly death) if Spock didn’t get treatment. He has an oath to keep, even if the Leonard McCoy of this universe wouldn't do the same.

He shudders to think what his Terran Empire counterpart would do in this situation. With the way this universe is run, the other McCoy would probably see Spock's condition as a chance to assassinate him, and gain all kinds of power in the process.

 _For your own good, Spock_ , he wants to shout, _get out of this medbay. Heaven forbid you're still here when your CMO returns._

Spock's vitals are improving more rapidly, but they're still not where McCoy wants them to be. He leans towards the monitor, as if his proximity to it will speed up Spock’s healing. He doesn't know how many of his five minutes have passed, but a sense of panic is starting to settle in. He’s been aware of his heart beating faster than normal for the past two minutes – three minutes? One minute?

He _has_ to get to the transporter room. 

McCoy decides that Spock will survive, and stops ignoring the alarm bells going off in his head. He turns toward the exit, leaving behind the medbay of horrors. He can only hope that the only other time he sees this place is in his nightmares – or, even better, he never sees this place again ever.

Something strong grabs his wrist from behind, and he stumbles to a halt. He turns around, to find that Spock is awake, and staring at him intently. His eyes widen as his heart goes into overdrive, the alarm bells in his head becoming warning klaxons on steroids. He does his best to not wince, but Spock's grip is firm. His bones feel like they're being crushed beneath Spock's fingers.

 _Damned Vulcan knows what he's doing_ he thinks, as he looks down at his hand. His nerves are starting to tingle already, and even if he wanted to move his fingers, he isn’t sure that he could. He looks back at Spock, and wonders what the hell is going through that Vulcan mind of his.

Spock sits up suddenly, graceful as a cat, without letting go of him. McCoy feels the seconds slipping away, his fear escalating to panic. He is _not_ going to get stuck here; he’d rather die, even if it has to be at Spock’s hands.

He doesn’t let himself question whether or not Spock would actually kill him without torturing him first. He doesn’t need his heart pounding in his ears any louder than it already is.

"Why did the captain let me live?" Spock asks. He's staring at him with a look best described as predatory, with an intensity, a curiosity that would make most people run away screaming. McCoy knows that look when he sees it, and it scares the hell out of him. He tries to pull away from Spock, but Spock's grip is unforgiving. Spock pulls him closer, and he swears he can feel his ulna start to fracture, a new stabbing pain distracting him from the numbness.

Spock slides off the biobed, his grip vise-tight, and starts guiding him backwards. McCoy struggles to come up with a plan, but his back is against a bulkhead only a few seconds later, and he has nowhere to escape to. He swallows hard and tries to take calming breaths, but he's trapped with an opponent he can't possibly hope to beat hand-to-hand. It had taken Jim, Scotty, Uhura, and himself to take down Spock earlier. One-on-one, he doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell.

He _has_ to make it to the transporter room. His five minutes are nearly up, if they aren't gone already. Where is Jim? He knows Jim wouldn’t leave without him if it could be helped. Jim would have checked in on him by now if he was out of time.

He surges towards Spock in an attempt to push him away. Spock's lips twist in a snarl, and his free hand comes down on McCoy's shoulder, slamming it against the bulkhead with brutal force. McCoy bites back a cry as sharp pain tears through his upper arm and the right side of his chest, fizzling out somewhere near his neck. Thank god for that.

"Damnit, Spock," he says through gritted teeth. "I just saved your life."

"And you have yet to tell me why, Doctor," Spock says calmly – too calmly. McCoy can hear the contained rage in Spock’s tone. "I asked you a question, and you did not answer it. This is the last time I will repeat myself: why did the captain let me live?"

McCoy is running out of options. He can’t fight Spock, because hurting him means spending more time taking care of him after, which means missing his ride home. He can’t count on Jim, either, because that also means fighting his way out of here. But he can’t tell Spock who he really is, either.

“You already know,” McCoy says. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be saying ‘the captain’; you’d be calling him Jim.”

Spock tilts his head slightly, considering the thought. McCoy prepares himself to resist, but before he can take another breath, Spock digs his thumb into McCoy's wrist. McCoy screams, as his world goes white with fire and agony. He shuts his eyes against the onslaught, only vaguely aware of his head hitting the bulkhead behind him.

Spock’s hand covers his mouth, muffling his screams. The pressure on his wrist eases, and the pain lessens to a dull ache. He stops screaming, but waits a beat before opening his eyes and giving Spock one of his most murderous glares. It doesn’t last long; the cold fury in Spock’s eyes sends a chill down his spine, and a fresh wave of terror washes over him, stomping out any snark he might have in him.

Spock removes his hand from McCoy’s mouth slowly. In the silence that follows, the only thing he hears is the sound of his own uneven, heavy breathing. Spock doesn't appear to have even broken a sweat. It dawns on him that he’s horribly helpless, that there’s no way he’s going to get out of here without hurting Spock or himself more. If Jim has to rescue him, it’s too late. They would both get stuck here because they’d be out of time, and he wouldn’t be able to live with that guilt. He’d rather die.

If Jim comes for him – and McCoy knows he will – he hopes that he has the courage to tell Jim to go on without him.

He refuses to believe that the wetness he can feel pooling in the corners of his eyes are tears. If he’s going to die here, he can at least accept defeat with dignity.

Spock’s fingertips near his temple and chin, and McCoy freezes.

“It seems there is no other way,” Spock says placidly, as he presses his fingertips against McCoy’s skin, an almost gentle touch compared with everything else McCoy has experienced today.

McCoy realizes too late that there’s still a fight to be had. 

_Our minds are merging, Doctor_ , comes Spock's voice, not through his ears, but through his own damn _head_. There's something else, too, a presence filtering into his own thoughts, a stream meeting another stream, merging and becoming one river. The river becomes a constant, changing the dynamics of his own consciousness.

_Our minds are one._

Oh god. Oh _god_. McCoy has always wondered what went on in Spock's head, but this is too much. He’s bombarded with a flurry of remembered scents, tastes, sights – memories and emotions, all in one evenly flowing tide, seemingly indistinguishable from his own. Alongside his own fear is Spock's curiosity, his confidence, and more than anything else, his confusion.

_I feel what you feel._

McCoy grabs onto Spock's confusion and curiosity, though he isn't sure how he does it, and tries to steer them to the side, into an undefinable darkness in a corner. Spock pushes back with a memory, the sight of the landing party on the transporter pad when he and the others had arrived. It binds to his memory from his perspective, on the transporter pad, and to how they had gotten there –

 _No!_ McCoy sees the trap, and does his best to force it away. He focuses on his pain, but Spock is quick to reply with another memory, this one of some kind of booth where Chekov is suffering, screaming, his whole body rigid with pain. It disgusts McCoy to see Chekov – anyone – in such pain, but before he can stop himself, the thought _that doesn’t exist in my universe_ flutters across his mind, and Spock seizes it.

 _Tell me more_ , he says, not with cold detachment, but with the heat of a branding iron trying to prod its quarry into action. McCoy shudders and lets out a quavering gasp, surprised by the intensity of Spock’s emotion. He always teased his own Spock about his inability to feel anything. He didn’t expect the exact opposite, that deep beneath the precise calculations and exacting science, there’s a boiling-hot _volcano_ of emotions that goes unexpressed, buried beneath layer upon layer of logic.

Did the Spock in his universe suppress his emotions in the same way?

 _Doctor_. Spock’s voice cuts through his shock like a scalpel, precise and sharp, with a hot edge of impatience. _If he is a parallel version of me, then yes, you can assume that he would behave similarly._

McCoy curses, and focuses his attention on blank space, in the hopes of driving Spock out of his head. Spock continues to barrage him, and with each memory comes an ensuing string of thought and emotions that he barely manages to stay ahead of. Every new suggestion is a race against his own damn mind, one that Spock is content to let him run.

_I know what you know._

He feels helpless against it, but he fights, and prays that Jim, Uhura, and Scotty are already gone.

Spock seizes that hope, and McCoy sees his blunder too late. The more he hopes, the more Spock learns about his time aboard the I.S.S. Enterprise. He tastes blood in his mouth, a copper tang biting into his consciousness, and he focuses on it, filling the forefront of his mind with a giant red pool, one that trickles outwards until it’s all he can see.

 _It is too late, Doctor,_ Spock says. _But I need to see what you did in engineering with Mr. Scott._

McCoy wants to scream, but before he can act, he sees himself in the Jeffries tube with Scotty, feels the hope he’d had in that moment, praying that Uhura was distracting Sulu from the security panel. It only takes a second for him to recollect the memory and all of his emotions tied with it. It makes him feel weak, that Spock can just manipulate him like this. He’s starting to hate how utterly _powerless_ he feels. This whole situation never favored him to begin with, but goddamnit, he feels like he should be able to do _something_.

 _I see_ , Spock says, as he takes control, replaying the memory. McCoy gives in, finally, and lets him, too exhausted to fight any longer. He barely registers that his body is collapsing, sliding against the bulkhead, rucking his shirt up along his back until he’s on the floor. Spock's grip never slackens; if anything, Spock's touch starts to feel like tiny warm drills, boring into his skull and his wrist. Spock plays through his memories from the past several hours, like a highlights reel from a nightmarish montage, and much to his shame, all McCoy can think to do is take it, and hope that it’s over soon.

After what feels like an eternity, the only thing left in his mind is the soothing sound of waves gently rolling onto a beach. Spock’s presence ebbs away, then leaves his mind altogether.

When he comes back into himself, Spock is pulling him up by his good arm. He stumbles to his feet, disoriented and reeling from the mind meld. He doesn’t meet Spock’s eyes, choosing instead to look at his shoulder.

"We must get you and your landing party back to your universe," Spock says. "And I need my crew back."

McCoy barely registers the detour to engineering. His mind is in a haze, as though his senses have been skewed just a few degrees off from normal. Spock doesn’t let go of him until they’re in the transporter room, and when he does, the wobbliness of his legs nearly gets the better of him. Scotty barely catches him, but instead of saying anything, he silently helps McCoy to the transporter pad. His shoulder is starting to hurt like hell now, burning through his mental shock, but instead of giving him something to focus on, the pain just adds to everything else Spock threw at him.

He's only vaguely aware that Jim is trying to import some information to Spock, but he can’t seem to focus on their interaction.

"Doctor," Scotty says, "Are you all right?"

He doesn't reply. He keeps staring at Spock, as though he’s the last thing anchoring McCoy to reality. Even when Jim has stepped onto the transporter pad, his eyes linger on Spock.

_What have you done to me?_

They energize, and Spock is the last thing he sees.

Spock – the clean-shaven, normal Spock he knows – is the first thing he sees when he rematerializes moments later. Jim and the others step forward off the landing pad. He’s aware that he should do the same, but when he does, everything moves in slow motion. His body feels heavier; the sound of his boots on the pad is louder than usual.

McCoy keeps staring at Spock, as he tries to make sense of the world again. He feels disoriented, as though someone is stirring the contents of his head with a spoon, refusing to let anything settle. The more he focuses on Spock, the less hazy his world seems to get, but the more clear the pain in his shoulder becomes.

The room gradually starts tilting to one side. He feels himself falling, but before he can even think about his maimed shoulder, he’s crashing against a solid surface – floor or wall, he can’t tell. Pain explodes across his conscious mind, but he doesn’t cry out, as though that simple act is too difficult for him.

"Bones?" Jim says, his voice only a soft, reverberating echo.

McCoy slides into darkness, right along the bulkhead.


End file.
